To sum it up:
- I know the truth, and you don’t.
- Beware the charismatic leader.
- The end is near.
- The end justifies the means.
It’s deja vu, all over again.
Category Organization
What can you control?
Spend your time and energy on what you can control rather than what you cannot control. Far too much effort is spent on elements beyond a person’s control. It may be unproductive to spend time and energy on the weather, world politics or your mother-in-law unless you can actually control or influence these. It is futile to spend energy trying to change the past. Life can be divided into three categories:
- That which you can control
- That which you can influence
- That which you cannot control
In the quest for a better life, the above serves well as a priority list.
Category 1 should include your own thoughts and emotions, your own actions and how you treat others. These are elements you can gain control over. Category 0.5 would include your family and friends, your workplace and your teammates in any sport you engage in. These are elements you can half-control or influence to a greater or lesser degree. Although Category 0 often steals attention, it deserves none. It serves best as an energy void. You should not spend attention on what you cannot control. It is valuable to learn from past incidents, but being stuck in past incidents is essentially an effort to change the past and results in energy wasted. It is good advice to first gain sufficient control of category 1 before too much energy is spent on category 0.5 all the while no energy is spent on category 0. Top athletes spend most of their energy on category 1. Politicians spend most of their energy on category 0.5. Some politicians, like in Northern Ireland, spend too much time on category 0. You cannot change the past. And you can only influence the future. But you can control what you think, feel and do right now. A great soccer player like Lionel Messi of Barcelona FC has achieved an amazing control of his own actions on the field. He has awesome skills and abilities as a soccer player. He also manages to positively influence his team mates, he “lifts” the whole team whenever he plays. And unlike most players, he doesn’t spend much energy on what he cannot control, like protesting a referee decision. If you never spent energy on category 0, you would be more in control of your life and influencing your environment more. In the start of a relationship there are two people hopefully in good control of themselves and without any control or much influence over the other. As the dating commences, they gradually influence the other person. If the influence is good and agreeable, they may end up as a couple. If one of them doesn’t settle for influencing his partner, but instead tries to control her, you end up with an abusive relationship. The attempt to “mold” or “over-influence” you partner is an effort to move your partner in under your control. Category 1 should be reserved for yourself. You should never try to control another person. You should instead try to influence others in a good way. You can be fully in control of your own performance at work. This includes the limiting of bad influences from others, and the acceptance of good influences and help. You can positively influence your colleagues and customers by focusing on category 0.5. You can “hit the wall” by drooling and complaining over stuff beyond your control. If all of your job resides in category 1, you probably don’t have colleagues or customers and the job would be boring unless you don’t like company. If your focus is mostly on complaining about factors in category 0, you should quit your job now. Category 0 is always huge. What matters is how much you can be in control of yourself and how much you can positively influence others.
A life of struggle with very little control of self and little influence over the environment
A path to a better life can be:
- Achieve control of you – your thoughts, emotions and actions – especially those actions in the fields that matters the most to you
- Increase your positive influence where it matters the most
- Spend little to no energy on matters outside of your control
An interesting life of with good control of self and good influence on the environment
It may sound simple to say and hard to practice. True. Practice may not make you perfect, but it will make you steadily better.
Overconfidence
Having started and run several companies and a few IT companies in particular, this latest story from Slashdot particularly grabbed my attention. The point of the story, “overconfidence” is applicable is many fields and situations besides that of estimating IT project. First a copy-paste from Slashdot:
“Dan Milstein from Hut 8 Labs has written a lengthy post about why software developers often struggle to estimate the time required to implement their projects. Drawing on lessons from a book called Thinking Fast and Slow by Dan Kahneman, he explains how overconfidence frequently leads to underestimations of a project’s complexity. Unfortunately, the nature of overconfidence makes it tough to compensate. Quoting:
Specifically, in many, many situations, the following three things hold true: 1- ‘Expert’ predictions about some future event are so completely unreliable as to be basically meaningless 2- Nonetheless, the experts in question are extremely confident about the accuracy of their predictions. 3- And, best of all: absolutely nothing seems to be able to diminish the confidence that experts feel. The last one is truly remarkable: even if experts try to honestly face evidence of their own past failures, even if they deeply understand this flaw in human cognition they will still feel a deep sense of confidence in the accuracy of their predictions. As Kahneman explains it, after telling an amazing story about his own failing on this front: ‘The confidence you will experience in your future judgments will not be diminished by what you just read, even if you believe every word.’”
And then quoting Laurens van der Post: “Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond any doubt that they are right.”
And when people are convinced about their conviction, things tend to go south pretty fast. This is seen also during Internet discussions as well as real life discussions. People seek certainty. And the quest for certainty is the real value, not the attainment of it. Quoting Voltaire: “Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.”
Thinking back to my childhood, I remember with fondness how I cherished the mysteries and uncertainties of life. I loved how I didn’t know, how I wanted to know, and my quest for new knowledge. But as time went by and I grew up, I unfortunately became more certain, less fondly in awe about life’s mysteries and less inquiring.
I am currently trying to find ways to kill my own certainties, be more open for new views and uncertainties and to bring more awe back into life.
Hugs.
Drop sales
If you are selling products or services that you need to convince the customers to buy, you are doing something wrong. Either sell something else or figure out why the customers aren’t running down your doors to get what you are offering.
Brendan had a week earlier this winter where he didn’t convince anyone about anything. That got me thinking. And I decided to at least stop pushing products or services on people. Market and present, yes. But using effort, no.
I figure it’s much smarter to present something that customers really, really want. And then deliver that better than they expected. Push is a sign of failure.
Scrap the SLA (Service Level Agreement)
According to Wikipedia, an SLA is:
“A service-level agreement is a negotiated agreement between two parties, where one is the customer and the other is the service provider. This can be a legally binding formal or an informal “contract” (for example, internal department relationships).“.
SLAs is a hot item in IT, and is given much weight in the organizational framework called ITIL.
Almost all IT directors I talk to rely heavily on SLAs or blame the lack of proper SLAs for lack of success.
But seriously, do you have an SLA with Google? With Facebook, Twitter or the scores of Internet services that you use personally? No – and if you are unhappy, you simply find another solution or service provider.
An IT service provider would be wise to simply scrap the SLA or any contract that seeks to bind the customer. Instead, let the customer be free to choose and move to another vendor if they feel like it. In that way, the service provider will have to be constantly performing better than the competition. And that is the best solution to keep the customers.
Instead of locking the customer with contracts, service the customer like no one else.
No contracts, no lock-in and you have no choice but to become and be the best.
Without even intellectual property protection, you would have to rely on pure and excellent service to retain your customers.
Customer lock-in mechanisms makes for laziness, dwindling creativity and thus ironically opens the door to better service providers.
SLAs are only warranted where the customer are not free to choose another provider, such as when the business strategy dictates the business units to only use the internal IT department.
Brainwashed!
Prompted by a discussion on a recent blog post, and inspired by a recent comment.
I don’t think it’s easy to agree on a clear definition of “brainwashing”, but I will offer my own indicator for when a person is brainwashed:
“You may suspect a person is brainwashed in an area when he habitually rationalizes and justifies wrongs.”
According to this – was I brainwashed when I was in the Church of Scientology?
Yep.
Trust vs. Distrust
Being inspired by a discussion on the previous blog post, I came to a realization that I posted as a comment on that discussion thread:
“Way more than 90% of the people can be at the point where they can take independent responsibility in a job. The only reason they do not is because they are in the wrong job or not properly trained. LRH had the wrong solution. He advocated a big front door and a big back door (recruit anyone and test them out, then scrap those who doesn’t work out). It’s very disrespectful IMO. And then he relied on heavy bureaucracy and policy and dictations to “keep people in line”. Because he didn’t trust people with responsibility. He evidently didn’t trust other people (which is seen from his years as an executive as well). Such reliance on commanding people quenches responsibility and initiative. More respectful recruitment, respectful training, trust in other’s intentions and ability to be responsible – THOSE are the ingredients that make for fantastic expansion. And THIS is the reason why the organizations I mentioned above expanded like crazy – much more than any organization relying on LRH Admin Tech could hope to achieve.
I think you have pointed the way to a major reason for me why LRH admin tech is a failure – the inherent distrust of employees. Maybe this is also a problem with the ethics tech? I will have to reflect on that. Thanks for the enlightening discussion.”
And in this I think I have nailed something. LRH didn’t trust people with responsibility. Was this because he regarded his fellow man as “broken”, as someone in need of fixing? And is David Miscavige’s reign in the Church of Scientology simply an extrapolation of this distrust? Is this a root cause somehow?
Someone who thinks the world is always cheating him is right. He is missing that wonderful feeling of trust in someone or something.
(Eric Hoffer)
Key success factors in business
From an article I stumbled across over at Harvard Business Review:
The secret to being a great manager at Bell Labs is hiring the right people, giving them the tools they need, pointing them in the right direction, and staying out of their way.
It aligns perfectly with my article, “Processes, Automation and Human Potential“. It sums up succinctly how you do not rely on policy and micro-management to get things done. Whenever I see an organization relying on dictations, I know they fail on a) recruitment, b) training or supplying the right tools for the employees to freely use, or c) setting clear goals for delivery.
(Hugh at Gapingvoid.com)
Checklist for creating a cult
- Make it your first policy to “Maintain friendly relations with the environment and the public.”
- Create some free or very cheap introductory service that give the public real gains
- Disseminate the introductory service widely, attracting many prospects
- Ensure every person that takes the introductory service feel indebted
- Sign the person up for more expensive service
- Make sure the service give real gains, lest people will leave
- Preferably advertise gains to be had that you cannot deliver, keeping the person always wanting the next service level
- Keep the atmosphere light and fun while the person invest increasingly more money and time
- Make the person feel special, as part of an elite society
- Enforce a policy that no one can talk about or discuss anything negative about the service
- Make up a good reason for this
- Ensure the person gets pot committed
- Increase the pressure, gradually squeezing the person for more time and money
- Have some confidential service that only the most pot committed and elite members can have
- Make sure the service levels end with the person being fully committed, more committed than to his day job, other petty interests, friends and family
- Tell the person that the next, unreleased level will only be released when some insane target is met
- You will then have a slave on your hand
- Back all this up by a rigid, authoritarian organizational structure
- Make sure everything is laid down in iron clad policy, removing the slightest inclination toward creativity or individual initiative
- Micromanage, measure every detail, come down hard on non-compliance and non-conformity in the organization
- Trademark everything, create a monopoly on the services, stamp out any competition
- Never defend against any criticism, always attack the critic by Argumentum ad Hominem, discredit always
- Amass enough money to litigate the hell out of any external threats
- Internal threats are handled with a policy on disconnection that makes the pot committed disconnect even from his own family
- Puff it all up with an apparency of social benefit programs
- Engulf the whole in excellent PR and glamorous videoed events with CGI effects
- Make it unassailable by calling it a religion
- As the guru, rake in money, live a glorious life
(Hugh at Gapingvoid.com)
What belief can do
Belief can make you stupid.
When you believe something strongly, when you firmly hold an opinion, you can end up spending your intelligence on justifying or explaining away facts that are contrary to your belief. Your intelligence and power of reasoning could be better spend on constructive efforts like fixing the flaws in your beliefs or creating something new.
We see this in politics every day – trying to justify one’s own position instead of keeping the eye on the ball, the result… a better society.
Marty Rathbun’s latest latest blog post is an excellent example of a guy justifying his beliefs. Mike Rinder’s comment inspired me to write this post here. Scientologists become experts in justifications as they are told to believe that the subject is The Only Way to salvation. When cracks become visible – they start justifying why the cracks are not there or why they are there for a greater reason. After years of studying the subject, they become extremely skillful in this. This may be the reason why Scientology is and should remain a religion. It is a belief system. It could move into the category of science, but not without inflicting severe pain in its justifiers.
Science is the practice of doing away with one’s beliefs and replacing them with knowledge.
Beliefs are healthy and important when they serve as motivation toward a goal. Beliefs are great for urging to action, but a substitute when used to explain what is.
Geir Isene - uncut 